The air of lassitude around school traffic planning is remarkable. Stand outside a primary school gate at drop-off or collection times and watch the number of lumbering SUVs arriving to deliver or pick up sturdy children living only a few kilometres from home.
Car parks are crammed. Cars block footpaths, pull up on the road to let children out then execute a three-point turn, pull into bus spaces causing arriving buses to block the traffic. Where continuous movement is called for, parents get out to kiss the child a long goodbye while fixing their little bags on their backs.
Tempers flare. Worse, engines are left idling.
When did this become a routine spectacle? Many who went to school 30 or 40 years ago will have memories of their hardy little selves trudging maybe 3km and more in all weathers. On a wet day, they might have been picked up by a parent somewhere along the road or packed into a Volkswagen by a passing neighbour.
The numbers back this up. Back in 1986, about a quarter of a million 5 to 12 year olds routinely walked to school in Ireland, according to CSO figures. By 2006, at the height of the Celtic Tiger, that had plunged to 109,000. But even with the climb to 133,000 in the 2022 census, it’s still only about half its 1986 heyday.
Where did all those little walkers go? They transferred to cars of course.
Primary schoolers travelling by car numbered about 133,000 in 1986 (compared with about 250,000 walkers at the time, remember). By 2006, the young car passengers had soared to nearly a quarter of a million and just 10 years on, reached a high of 327,000. By 2022, they had fallen by a modest 16,000 to 311,000.
[ Share your view: What is stopping children from walking to school?Opens in new window ]
Attentive parents face scrutiny and judgment simply for letting a child walk ahead of them on the street
In 1986, about 24,000 of 5 to 12 year olds used bikes to get to school. By 2006 that had collapsed to a low of 4,000. According to the 2022 census, it has since climbed to 14,000 – still a lot fewer than 1986.
Interestingly, the great losses to active travel were not accounted for by buses. The 1986 CSO number of 105,000 fell to half that in 2022.
The walking/cycling figure for 13 to 18 year olds in that period got worse. The 51,000 who cycled in 1986 dwindled to 6,500 by 2011. Though that doubled to 13,000 in 2022, it was still just a quarter of the 1986 figure. By contrast, the number of 13 to 18 year olds being driven more than quadrupled from 1986 to 158,000 in 2022.
Even assuming some of these numbers are affected by population dips and rises, the changes reflect a dramatic cultural shift from the boom years.
People come up with plenty of reasons. Heavy schoolbags. Parents with several children operating at differing school timetables. Distance from school, more cars, road safety concerns, idiot drivers, weather, bullies, kidnapping, idiot drivers ...
And time scarcity. Parents say they would like to walk their children to school – but then mention the need to have the car to continue the onward journey to work. The hole in this argument is the perceived binary: that parents must be present on the walk or cycle or nothing else can happen. In fact, they are part of the idiot driver cohort. A Vancouver study – a city known for its cyclists and walkable neighbourhoods, where school catchment areas are designed so that every primary student is within walking distance of their public school – not only found that half the children are still driven to school; school traffic is responsible for a fifth of the morning traffic.
It’s a vicious circle. When more and more children are driven to school, roads are increasingly unsafe, which persuades more parents that they need to drive.
A less tangible problem is that children are much less independent than they were in the 1980s. Back then, a measure of a six-year-old’s development was whether he could travel a few streets alone, to the shop or a friend’s house. Today good, attentive parents face scrutiny and judgment simply for letting a child walk ahead of them on the street. If society expects parents to supervise their children wherever they are, that will obviously apply to the school commute as well as everything else.
Both structural and cultural change are needed. There will always be cars. Some children will need to be driven to school on some or all days. A colleague cites some US schools where drop zones are supervised by parent volunteers to ensure drivers wait their turn and maintain the flow. Some close streets to car traffic in front of schools during drop-off and pick-up. Others get closer to the root problem by running a “drive to five” system, where child are dropped off a five-minute walk from school; this allows those who live too far away to walk to participate in the final five. It’s not a lot but it would be a start.
Too much happens by doing nothing. Air quality declines, engines are left idle, and we find that more and more children – one in 10 in Ireland now – suffer from asthma. And the existential anxiety about climate change felt by children and young people increases. If they learn by example, what are we teaching them?